Kif Strike Back by C. J. Cherryh Page A

it."
     
    "We've got scan image going out," Haral said. "Jik says affirmative, he's still coming in."
     
    "Gods hope he isn't kidding," Geran said.
     
    "Gods hope," Pyanfar muttered. Visions of attack assailed her. One swift blast at the dock from either of her two incoming allies and it was ail over. But she trusted Jik. She hoped. "Khym. Come on."
     
    "You going down there?" Hilfy asked, turning her chair about.
     
    "Nose to that board, youngster. Stay put. Come on, Khym. This one's yours."
     
    Khym's ears came up. He had not looked so cheerful since they took him into fire on the docks in the Kshshti mess.
     
     
     
    She had her pocket gun in one hand, a com unit at her belt with the gain turned up full as the two of them rode the lift down. Khym had his bare hands; and those were not bad odds--unless, she thought, the kif down in their airlock had a knife or worse: gods witness, they were not a warship, to have security precautions and detectors. They went on guess-work, took the gamble-
     
    -lunatic, a small voice said. For a bedraggled, half-crazed human's sake, to risk The Pride.
     
    "Don't push it," she said to Khym while the lift was on the way down. She thumbed the safety off the pistol. "Gods forbid it's called our bluff and brought us a grenade."
     
    "What do you do then?" Khym asked.
     
    "Throw it back, for godssakes! How should I know?" The thought ruffled her nape-hairs. And punching the button on the in-lift com: "Haral-Stand by that inside hatch release!"
     
    The lift door whisked open. She walked out after Khym with her gun ready in her hand.
     
    "Now, captain?" Haral asked.
     
    "Now." -     
     
    A corridor and a half away the airlock's inner hatch opened. Pyanfar grabbed Khym by the arm and jerked him over to the side of the corridor where there was vantage.
     
    Like a black slither of freefall oil, -the kif rounded the corner and stood there a good distance down the longest corridor The Pride had-stood there, all gangling gray-black nakedness, hands out to show that they were empty.
     
    "All right," she said, never taking the gun off the kif s middle. "You keep those palms out, kif, and keep them in plain sight."
     
    "The air stinks."
     
    "It stinks out there too, kif. Just come a bit forward. Stop right there. Khym, go to the lock and get its clothes. Search them for weapons."
     
    "There is my knife and my pistol," the kif said.
     
    "Fine. Move it, Khym."
     
    Khym went-not without queasiness, that passing in the corridor. Khym flattened his ears as he went by the kif. The kif half turned its head, the hunched shoulders, the forward thrust of the long jaw become something strangely serpentine and graceful. The kif continued the motion in reverse, swinging back to her. The hands lifted, showing empty palms.
     
    "You're mine, huh?" Pyanfar said sourly. "What's Sikkukkut got in mind in this exchange? I don't trade my claim on the human. Hear?"
     
    It made a slow move of its hands. "I hear."
     
    "So answer, you earless bastard. What are you doing here?"
     
    "Waiting," it said.
     
    "For what?"
     
    It gave a kifish shrug. "I don't know."
     
    "You hand me puzzles, kif, I'll skin you."
     
    Khym reappeared in the corridor behind the kif with his   hands full of black cloth and leather. "Knife and gun," he called out. " Nothing else."
     
    "Bring its robes. Give them to it."
     
    He brought them. Dropped them at the kif s side.
     
    "May I?" the kif asked.
     
    She motioned with the gun. It bowed its head and moved very slowly, gathered its belongings and held them to its chest with that hunch of shoulders and lowering of head peculiar to kif. It looked sinister in one instant, beaten and pathetic in the next, in each shifting shadow on the gray-black, wrinkled skin.
     
    The hairs rose on her back. "Khym. Open up that washroom. Skkukuk. Inside with you."
     
    The head lifted. "It is a waste," Skkukuk said. "Give me my weapons and I shall give you your